Sunday, August 21, 2011

Resolutions for 2011: Taking Stock

Even though I'm no longer a student, the start of a new school year still feels new to me. So my habit is to make New Years Resolutions in January and New School Year Resolutions in September. The Fall resolutions are smaller since they're only for 4 months, but it's a good time to take stock of where I am in terms of my January resolutions and to tweak things as necessary. I never feel super committed to resolutions, but I love making them and they act more like guidelines for where I want my life to go and be.

So let's see how my January resolutions are doing:

1) Go running at least once a week once it gets warm (no way I'm stepping out in this 25 degree weather. Did I somehow bring East Coast weather with me to the West Coast? Is this my fault?)

This one totally did not happen at all, but since I DID start doing Bar Method and have done some outdoorsy sorts of things (hiking in Israel and hiking in Arch Cape), I'm going to chalk this as a victory. The point of this resolution was to be more physically active and get regular exercise.

2) Start a new garden on my new balcony! (yayayayyayaya, can't wait!)

This was completely successful! It's been interesting to see what would grow well and what would not. To my surprise, my basil never took off; the leaves stayed small and the plants grew leggy despite my best efforts. The sage died completely for reasons unknown. Parsley and chamomile did well.

3) Make homemade cards all year (I've made two already so I'm totally successful so far).

I've made several cards this year and will continue to make more.

4) Finish the quilt already.

Complete fail. I don't think I've touched the quilt at all this year. Morale plummeted after realizing that I miscounted the number of patches I would need and that actually I still needed about 20 small squares. This shouldn't be so long to cut and sew up but it's a bit of a production to haul everything out so this is on hold.

5) Start vermicomposting (try not to be grossed out by the worms).

Success! I was VERY disgusted by the worms when I first got them and could barely look at them, but now I've adjusted and it's fine. I'm still wearing gloves every time I go near them, but I like to dig around and see if they are still there and alive. There's a layer of composted material at the bottom of my bin already so I look forward to using it next year. How I get that stuff out is going to be another production I think...

6) Learn to drive and join zipcar.

This one is a little tricky. I did look into driving schools but they all assume that you have a car of your own to practice on outside of classes. This of course, I do not have. My next plan was to just practice driving a bit whenever I was at home with family, but that hasn't really panned out. This will require more thought, because I really need to do this.

7) Ride my bike around when the weather gets nice.

Oops. My bike still has flat tires and has not been fixed. I would still very much like to do this and I think I have a couple of months left of decent weather left.

8) Update my blog regularly.

There are some weeks I update more than others, but I would say this was overall successful. As a corollary to this one, I've started scrapbooking and that is a really nice way of documenting the important events in my life.

9) Learn and memorize all of Bach's Two Part Inventions.

Um, I was off to a good start on this but it sort of fizzled out around April or May. I'm honestly not sure why, except things got rather hectic around then with visitors, travel, mouse course and fellowship. I'd like to resume but must figure out a way to balance this with all of my other activities.

10) Speak louder.

I forgot about this one! I've been making a little more effort when giving presentations to speak louder but this is just an ongoing thing for me.

I'll have to think about what Fall resolutions I want to make, but overall I feel pretty good about the state of my January resolutions. I think I've made some positive changes in my life and am doing things that make me happy. That's kind of all one can ask for.